Monday, June 1, 2009
Laid Off Loser Playlist, June 1, 2009
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Laid Off Loser Album of the Day: "Morrison Hotel"
31-year-old in charge of fixing GM
It's not me, I swear. I have my own life to fix right now.
Good luck to this dude. He's probably making mad bank, but I still wouldn't trade places with him. I'd bet a 1988 Chevy Celebrity Wagon he has to wear pants to work.
Friday, May 29, 2009
Laid Off Loser Playlist, May 29, 2009
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Laid Off Loser Album of the Day: "Dance Mania"
Tito Puente and His OrchestraLaid Off Loser Jazz Week comes to a close with a spectacular summertime party record.
Tito Puente may not have invented mambo music, but the "King of Latin Music" and his orchestra came to personify the Latin big band. Dance Mania, the best-selling album in Puente's vast catalog, demonstrates why.
Fun, spirited and sassy, Dance Mania is a rhythmic delight recorded at the height of the '50s mambo craze. Brilliant brass and popping percussion burst from the hi-fi on every track, calling for hips to shake and beers to break open.
The sunshine's back, fool. Drop the needle on Dance Mania, hit the patio and chill out to this space-age bachelor pad classic.
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Laid Off Loser Playlist, May 28, 2009
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Tito Puente and His Orchestra - Dance Mania: Legacy Edition
Laid Off Loser Album of the Day: "Sketches of Spain"
Miles DavisThe famously restless Miles Davis was never one to sit on his laurels and milk successes until they were dry. Which is why, after defining modal jazz on 1959's masterpiece Kind of Blue, he switched gears and recorded the heavily-orchestrated, flamenco-inspired Sketches of Spain with arranger/composer/conductor Gil Evans.
While the two albums have in common a somber tone, in terms of style and tempo, they are worlds apart. Whereas Kind of Blue swings and grooves, the exotic, moody Sketches of Spain slowly unfolds, with Evans' sweeping Technicolor orchestration setting the pace and Davis' hypnotic trumpet floating in and out and around the lush strings and vibrant brass. The result is a hypnotic, meditative piece of music that found Davis once again defying and expanding the barriers of jazz music.
This two-disc set includes the original album, alternate takes, complementary tracks from other Davis albums and the only live performance of the album's centerpiece, "Concierto de Aranjuez (Adagio)." Jazz nerds may balk at the lack of previously unreleased material, but this smart presentation is about context, and taken together the 17 tracks tell the unabridged musical story of Evans' and Davis' memorable collaboration.
Laid Off Loser will have his revenge on Seattle
Laid Off Loser of the Day: Amy Pence-Brown
Amy Pence-Brown of Boise, Idaho, recently was laid off as a curator at the Boise Art Museum.
Amy is an independent curator and arts professional in Boise. She is a native Idahoan who received her undergrad degrees from the University of Idaho and her Master’s in Art History from the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota.
She has worked at the Weisman Art Museum and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, as well as the Portland Art Museum and the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. Most recently, Amy was the Associate Curator of Art at the Boise Art Museum for three years and she is currently an adjunct member in the Art Department at Boise State University. Amy serves on the City of Boise’s Visual Arts Advisory Committee and functions as a Historic Preservation Commissioner for the city.
Immediately upon her layoff, Amy was hired as a curatorial consultant to help out with the City of Boise’s expanding public art collection as well as consult Eagle’s Woodriver Cellars winery on their exciting new art gallery and artist studio space.
Since the layoff, she also has started a blog about arts, culture, kids and living on a budget, Idaho style. Read it at http://idaho-style.blogspot.com.
Amy also is now a full-time stay-at-home mom to two little girls, Lucy, 5, and Alice, 1. Her husband, Eric, is a chemistry professor at Boise State University.
Amy has been honored by rave reviews and interviews in the local media over the past three years, often regarding her work as a stellar young art professional in the community. Her artwork was featured on the cover of a recent Boise Weekly.
Amy has a wide variety of skills and a unique academic background, and is especially interested in part-time, freelance or consulting work in the fields of art, architecture, teaching and history. She’s also a very big fan of trading and bartering and is open to the possibility of trading services for art.
For Amy’s full resume and portfolio, e-mail penceamy@hotmail.com.
New jobless claims are down, but the unemployed are staying unemployed
It's encouraging to hear that new unemployment claims are down, but not so encouraging to hear the jobless are not finding jobs. Read the full story here.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Laid Off Loser Playlist, May 27, 2009
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Is your home a bad investment?
After receiving my new, lower assessment in the mail today, I'm inclined to answer in the affirmative.
According to this article, owning a home ain't all it's cracked up to be.
Laid Off Loser Album of the Day: "Mingus Ah Um"
Charles MingusMingus, man. What a cool cat. A badass bassist, a killer composer, a mad genius, a raging soul. If you need an introduction, you can't go wrong with Mingus Ah Um, presented here in a two-disc set that includes bonus tracks, alternate takes and Mingus Ah Um's equally adventurous followup, Mingus Dynasty, culled from the same 1959 recording sessions.
One of the most daring jazz musicians of his era, Mingus is nonetheless overshadowed by free jazz pioneer Ornette Coleman. But the directions Mingus took hard bop composition and improvisation were no less phenomenal and influential.
Mingus Ah Um is a prime example, widely regarded as one of (if not the) best Mingus albums. While infused with the blues, Duke Ellington and Jelly Roll Morton, Mingus Ah Um is not your typical late-50s hard bop record. It's a raw, unhinged expression of sound peppered with primitive gospel howls, big band bombast and manic, Middle Eastern-tinged flare-ups.
It's a wild ride — tailor-made for screaming down the interstate in the middle of the night — that moves from hellfire testifying ("Better Git It In Your Soul") to bluesy 3 a.m. regret ("Goodbye Pork Pie Hat"), then back to pure propulsion "Boogie Stop Shuffle" before another smooth downshift (the sweet and somber "Self-Portrait in Three Colors") and on and on and on. Along the way, the thing never loses its swing or effervescent cool — it's like an acid-dosed imaginary score to a Raymond Chandler novel.
Damn straight better git it in your soul.
Dumbing yourself down to get a job
Here's my new and improved resume, spit-shined and streamlined to include only the most pertinent information in these times of woe and want:
"Has face."
I completely understand this logic, even if it is, at the end of the day, a form of deception. No one wants to hire an egghead Harvard Ph.D to flip burgers, because the egghead Harvard Ph.D will likely bolt the second a better opportunity presents itself.
Speaking from experience, it's horribly frustrating to get shut out of a job (or jobs) simply because you played the game and did all the right things with your life — get good grades, go to college and earn a degree, advance your career, maintain a strong work ethic, etc. I think I've mentioned this before, but when I returned from Europe in 2002, I was jobless for four months, and in that time I applied at a lumber yard, pizza joint, Borders and countless other blue collar, retail and service industry jobs and didn't so much as get a call back for any of them.
But like I said, I see their point. After college graduation and before my first professional job, I landed a job as a door guy at a Kent State bar, mostly on a bullshit story about looking to go back to school winter semester. I had little, if any, intention of going back to school winter semester. I had simply run out of money and needed more cash to maintain my Dude-like existence that fall, which consisted of leeching off my parents, sitting in a hot tub, hanging out on campus and getting loaded with my best friend.
But I got sick of being the door guy after a month of taking shit from knucklehead frat boys and other assorted collegiate assholes, so I got off my duff, sent out some resumes and landed a newspaper job. When I told the bar manager I was quitting, it was the first and only time I've ever been laid into for leaving a job. He totally called me out on the bullshit story about going back to school winter semester, and I totally deserved it.
Yet, in that month as the door guy, I worked my ass off, and it wasn't exactly glorious work. But I showed up on time, stayed late and never complained. Wouldn't an employer want to hire an eager beaver with a strong work ethic, as opposed to a less-attractive candidate who would barely get the job done on a rudimentary level but, more importantly, never bolt for greener pastures?
Right now, people aren't likely to hop from job to job — they're happy just to get what they can and hold on to it for dear life. So what if hiring the egghead Harvard Ph.D comes back to bite you in the ass — just call one of the other candidates and hire him then. And if that doesn't work out, hire someone else. I think I might know a few people looking for work.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Laid Off Loser Playlist, May 26, 2009
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It's Laid Off Loser Jazz Week!
Taking a slight break from abusing the Idaho Department of Labor, Laid Off Loser is celebrating the re-release of four jazz classics this week from the stellar Legacy Recordings imprint.
Last year, Legacy jumped on the vinyl bandwagon and started pressing some excellent rock and jazz reissues on 180-gram wax, and now they're marking the 50th anniversary of jazz music's greatest year, 1959, with four CD box sets that hit stores today.
Look below for a review of Dave Brubeck's seminal Time Out, then check back all week long for albums by Miles Davis, Charles Mingus and Tito Puente.
Laid Off Loser Album of the Day: "Time Out"
The Dave Brubeck QuartetA finger-snapping, toe-tapping classic, Time Out is jazz as sunshine and spring air, the most likable serious-jazz album this side of Kind of Blue.
An album of many feats — the pop radio hit "Take Five" was the first jazz instrumental single to sell a million copies — Time Out's greatest triumph is its palatability. From a technical perspective, this is difficult music — the title nods to Brubeck's break from the traditional 4/4 jazz time signature — yet it never sounds difficult like so many experiments in compositional form do.
Maybe that's why "Take Five," recorded in 5/4 and 3/4 waltz time, was such a hit — perhaps the ears of casual listeners were ready for something new and fresh, even if they didn't understand (or care about) the mechanics behind it. And really, unless you're a jazz nerd, the technical mumbo-jumbo is secondary to the deep, intrinsic appeal of Brubeck's noir-cool piano rhythm, Joe Morello's crisp, cymbal-heavy beat and Paul Desmond's fluid, understated tenor sax phrasing.
Lively opener "Blue Rondo A La Turk," meanwhile, begins in 9/8 time. Mechanically, it works a traditional Turkish rhythm. Compositionally, it's based on a Mozart piece. Heady stuff indeed, yet it's second only to "Take Five" in fame and likability. The rest of the album follows suit — seriously swinging in the absence of simplicity.
This 50th anniversary edition includes a DVD interview with Brubeck on the making of Time Out and a bonus disc of unreleased live cuts from the Newport Jazz Festival recorded in the early '60s. Though two of the recordings are pieces from Time Out (fast-paced, exploratory versions of "Blue Rondo A La Turk" and "Take Five"), the majority of the cuts are bluesy, boogie-woogie hard bop in the vein of the 1963 Dave Brubeck Quartet album At Carnegie Hall.
Monday, May 25, 2009
Laid Off Loser Playlist, May 25, 2009
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Memorial Day = day off
The Laid Off Loser is throwing burnt hot dogs at cars with his family and will not be posting today.
Check back starting tomorrow for Laid Off Loser Jazz Week and profiles of two new Laid Off Losers.
For now, enjoy the music:
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